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Saturday, April 27, 2013

When it was first revealed at E3 2012, I was excited and gushed about its potential to create a seamless communications network for
fans, and users of Nintendo hardware across multiple platforms, a kind of
Twitter for gamers, a micro-social network. Six months after Wii U’s launch
Miiverse has arrived on phones and for browsers and reality seems to have crept
up and dashed some of those high hopes.

Checking what's new?
Expect to see a lot of this

Miiverse for the phone and PC browsers look robust
enough. Simple design that is evocative
of the Wii U Miiverse interface, and very Twitter-like. However, moving to
anything substantive, such as looking at my own feed or the activity feed from
friends and those I’m following, I’m met
with relatively long loading times, compared say to my twitter app, or
even the mobile/web version of twitter.
It’s a pain to see what’s new.
Yes, I understand Miiverse has to load images as well as text on the
feed itself, but some streamlining would be appreciated given the Wii U
Miiverse isn’t the fastest thing in the world either.

More importantly, there’s no functionality to make a new
post directly from a PC or phone browser. The private messaging system is
missing, nor is there an option to follow /friend interesting posters that I may
stumble upon while casually browsing through the communities on my phone. Why
these limitations? Nintendo could easily
create a tag for posts made of different hardware (Wii U, 3DS, Internet) but allowing Miiverse as a reply
only feature is detrimental to the growth and vitality of the social aspect of
the network. Even if a filter is
specifically added to prevent children for seeing off-Wii U posts, it would
still be a nice functionality for users to correspond and socialize on Miiverse
outside of home, and to make gaming related posts in that context. If I were ever to meet Mr. Miyamoto in
person again, I’d like to post it to Miiverse first.

Miiverse app for the phones (the unofficial Andriod version
notwithstanding) would be the obvious next step for Nintendo. A web address isn't very visible in today’s
app centric smartphone. An app could
raise the profile of Miiverse and could also solve some of the performance
issues by streamlining a smartphone’s resources to run a set number of features
by caching feed updates into the app even when the phone is in sleep mode to
speed up load time and allowing the functionality to ping and alert users to
check the app when there is activity in their feed. A very contemporary feature
that twitter already has.

It is interesting to note that the web based Miiverse is blocked on the Wii U and 3DS
browsers. Since the Wii U already has Miiverse as a system feature blocking it on the Wii U browser makes sense. The fact it is also blocks on the 3DS is a
fairly good indication the service will arrive in some form on the 3DS. And on that note, I hope that Miiverse on the 3DS will exist in OS level rather
than as a separate app, so that I can actually suspend a game and use it. The feature could perhaps take the place of
the underutilized notepad functionality which incidentally already has the
functionality to pull a suspended game’s in-game screenshot from memory. Something Miiverse also uses in allowing
users to post a screenshot of their in-progress games. This would allow players use the Miiverse in
a way that is more or less similar to how we use it on the Wii U.

Slick Interface: A good start but
many Wii U options are missing

The fear is that Nintendo being Nintendo, Miiverse on
3DS could also arrive in a decidedly
less interesting format. As a separate app
that is not integrated into any game, or worse, as a separate app and in its
own ‘walled garden’ addressing 3DS only releases. I certainly hope for an open Miiverse that is
accessible across all Nintendo platforms moving forward. The current ‘Year of Luigi’ community is a
perfect example of a Miiverse community that would benefit from 3DS
cross-posting.

More generally as a Nintendo-centric social network,
Miiverse needs the raw numbers (of users) to generate the kind of interesting
discussion, memes, tending topics, and maybe even the occasional scandal to
draw people in. However, seeing as to
how the web and phone version seems more limited than what many of us had
originally envisaged, we cannot rule out that Nintendo’s goal is not to make a
social network for their users, which in my mind would be a tragic mistake. But
Nintendo’s opaque goals on Miiverse means we cannot rule out this possibility.

On final analysis, while it’s nice to have Miiverse on my
phone and on my PC, and I’ve find myself checking my feed more often, the current
incarnation of Miiverse for PCs and phones just feels a little lacking. It
certainly delivered everything shown to
us at E32012. Its just that after the E3
‘reveal’, My mind went in directions far
grander than what the final product suggested.
None of the features I assumed would be standard (off-Wii U posting, a grand confederacy of current Nintendo
products with Miiverse support) were actually promised, but rather, we as consumers assumed it. There’s certainly nothing stopping them
releasing a Miiverse app on the now seven year old Wii, and turning these web
based experiences on the phone into apps.
But as a first step, Miiverse as a website feed is adequate. Let’s hope for better things in the future.

Saturday, April 20, 2013

After two disappointing DS entries and to me what felt like
a lucklustre Wii entry, I felt that maybe it was time to leave Zelda alone. The ‘major’ entries to the Zelda franchise have increasingly become bogged down
by long laborious story sequences, overlong tutorial ‘sandboxes’ and desolate
overworlds. Yet, in
the back of my mind, I’ve always wanted to experience again the sheer joy of
the Zelda game that got my hooked –A Link to the Past.

I was beyond thrilled when Nintendo announced earlier in the
week that there would be a new 3DS Zelda game set in the world of A Link to the
Past. This is a game that I’ve thought
about and cautiously wished for. After
downloading the 3DS preview trailer, it was apparent that this a real honest to
goodness non-gimmicky top-down Zelda.
The antidote to the creative doldrums the franchise finds itself in.

Of course, a short
one-minute trailer can only show so much. Thankfully, Nintendo also had demo units for
journalists to try and since last week plenty of hands on impressions have
began to filter through. One in
particular shows an extended hands-on video with a direct sound feed from the
3DS, confirming that the soundtrack, at least for this demo, is a sufficiently
moody remixed dungeon theme from A Link
to the Past.

Visually, the game embraces its pedigree, bringing
back the fresh looking round faced Link of the late 80s and early 90s that I
grew up with, with the yellow banded trim on his green cap. The ornamentations such as snake/cobra themed
motifs, and the metal dungeon doors with the evil eyes are back. Everything
from puzzle components of the test dungeon and the layout of overworld itself
drew directly from A Link to the Past.

The extended demo
confirmed that this 3DS entry will be tight compact Zelda game with quick
and easy swordplay and shield mastery with fast navigation through the screen. This
speed is further reinforced by the fluid framerate, which appears to run at a
very impressive 60 frames per second. The ease with which Link moves on screen and his
quickness harkens back to that era of games where things respond as they
should. There are also subtle modern progressions. In the demo, the magic bar (green bar on the left of the screen) now slowly recharges when magic isn't being used. Eliminating one layer of inventory and magic points management that bedeviled some Link to the Past players.

Aesthetically this is as I had imagined A Link to the Past
could look in 3D. Granted we mainly only
see a few scenes outside in Hyrule and mostly inside dungeons, the minimalistic designs is the modern
interpretation of A Link to the Past’s clean pixel Art, with a sheen added to
the walls and floors as they catch bits of light and reflect sparks from Link’s
shield blocks.

While the 3DS demo clearly brought over visual elements from
A Link to the Past, the aesthetic choices for the 3D conversion haven’t been without
its critics. There were some who were
concerned they looked simplistic and not ‘lived –in’ enough, prompting Industry
personality Cliff Bleszinski aka Cliffy
B (formerly of Epic) to chime in with a disappointed tweet that people who arecomplaining are ‘part of the problem’. In
an extension of the critique, one piece of fan art from A Link to the Past’sopening sequence was used as a primary point of comparison in one of the
discussions over at NeoGAF. The argument seems to be essentially asking for a
‘grittier’ look. The rocks needed
texture, the grass needed to be browner.

I’m not really sure that’s what the Zelda of our childhood
would have looked like had it been a modern franchise. While we can quibble over Nintendo’s art
direction, I would agree that the demo dungeons lacked visual unity. It is as
if we are merely watching layers stacked upon layers, with no aesthetic logic
to their design. Where is the light coming from exactly?

Even in the 1990s, the designers of A Link to the Past’s many dungeons understood
that dungeons needed a logical unity of purpose to their design. Following this approach, they took care to
show how the levels were lit, and how floors and puzzles were interconnected and
how the overall design fit a purpose, often with hidden patterns and
multi-tiered Indiana Joneseque puzzles that blew my twelve year old mind. Doing this pushed the SNES’ to show off its
many graphical effects, playing with light and darkness, pushing the SNES with
a generous use of transparency effects and parallax scrolling.

The proposed Zelda
game for the 3DS could do more in terms of pushing the 3DS in that
direction. Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon
showed us the 3DS can pull off some impressive lighting. So let’s see more dungeons
with light sources like torches reflecting and refracting light around gleaming
rooms, beams of light filtering through
and illuminating the environs and staircases, clever trap doors and secret
entrances that unite the dungeons into a single puzzle, rather than a collection
of puzzles as we’ve seen in the demo. That
said, demo is the operative word. This is a demo experience with a test
dungeon. Nothing would indicate we’re
playing a finished product. The dungeon may not even be in the final game.

I’m fairly confident Nintendo will deliver with this title
in terms of crafting a compelling experience.
To that end gamers and fans of the franchise should also be cautious in
jumping to conclusions by either proclaiming the game’s success as forgone
conclusion or lamenting Nintendo ‘cutting corners’. It feels that both points of view
over-exaggerate and fit into pre-existing narratives of people want to see
rather than a true unadulterated first impression.

The Legend of Zelda demo on the 3DS is clearly impressive in
how closely it captures the spirit of the original SNES title. Here’s to hoping that the final product will
not disappoint.